Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks

Your very basic needs for martial arts information.

Directed by: Serge Ou

Starring: Scott Adkins, Jessica Henwick, Cynthia Rothrock, Richard Norton, Juju Chan, Michael Jai White, Chin Siu Ho, Amy Johnston

Year: 2019

English with English Subtitles

Released in 2019, Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks mixes old footage, image over lays, grain filters in abundance with a loud and crass score that invokes a 70’s vibe. Depending on how you see it it can be a homage or it can be a very misguided presentation of the genre. All this would be well and good if it bought something new to the table but sadly it doesn’t really give any new insight to the niche genre that regular fans wouldn’t already know.

With such an expansive history and a wealth of information it would be hard for a feature length documentary to cover the many facets of the genre, Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks sadly suffers from trying to cram too much into a relatively short window, affording little to no time for each person to get there say or just skimming over some important impacts of the industry such as Jimmy Wang Yu’s relevance, Lau Kar Leung’s contribution or the importance of Golden Harvest, strangest of all is the omission of Jet Li. Sometimes the short hand version of the story is provided which takes away from some of the finer details. With a wealth of information on Bruce Lee readily available in various media forms its rather disheartening for the documentary to allocate so much time to Bruce Lee, no doubt he is an important figure to the genre but 2009’s How Bruce Lee Changed the World has already covered him extensively, and the time afforded could have been better used on other notable figures.

The sporadic editing don’t help matters with little room to really give a detailed analysis on the subject matters, jumping from Shaw Brothers, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan etc. in such a rapid pace. This also affects the various names and titles that pop up with the interviewee and before you even have time to read the information it disappears for it never to pop up again. The way it transitions into topics is also odd, where the sudden shift from Bruce Lee to the influence on African American culture and then back to Shaw Brothers or the topic on B-boy’s martial arts influences then jumping to Jackie Chan then to Parkour and so forth. It just serves as a reminder of how How Bruce Lee Changed the World (2009) is a much better documentary in establishing the connection between martial arts, Parkour and other influences.

The documentary does offer host of footage from the likes of King Boxer aka Five Fingers of Death, The One Armed Swordsman, Police Story and Come Drink with Me to name a few, so it clearly has done something right in getting the various permission to these footages. Stock interviews from Run Run Shaw and Jackie Chan is also a nice addition. The filmmakers have managed to bring in a host of notable individuals, the likes of Philip Ng, Ridley Tsui, Juju Chan, Mike Leeder, Scott Adkins, Chen Pei Pei just to name a few each providing their insights into the genre. Cynthia Rothrock provides some genuinely funny anecdotes while Richard Norton, Don “the dragon” Wilson, Robert Samuels, Chin Siu Ho who were all part of the golden era of Hong Kong films providing interesting tidbits of information. The inclusion of Golden Harvest’s very own Andre Morgan, who helped the famous studio during its golden era, is a very welcome addition sadly the documentary barely utilises his knowledge in the interviews other than using him to provide soundbites.

With information into the martial arts genre easily available with documentaries such as The Best of The Martial Arts Films (1990), Top Fighter (1995), Top Fighter 2 (1996) and The Art of Action: Martial Arts in Motion Pictures (2002) already covering such topics and if you include How Bruce Lee Changed the World (2009) and Jackie Chan: My Stunts (1999) then its really hard to recommend this documentary that has little new to offer other than the mentions of the more recent martial arts films such as One Bak and The Raid, and these are only fleetingly mentioned in the last moments of the documentary.

I feel that this is better served for the average Joe who has a passing interest in the history of Hong Kong martial arts cinema. It is very concise and brief providing just enough snippets of information to give an overall picture, for those more initiated to the genre they can give this documentary a miss.

Lastly its surprisingly odd that even with there collective name of talents available Apple store spotlights Starring: Juju Chan, Andre Morgan, Colin Geddes, Jade Leung a combination of names that the average person won’t even know of, they would have been better served with Scott Adkins or Michael Jai White.